In the fall of 1992, I collected fruit from a large collection of crabapple cultivars and open pollinated crabapple seedlings growing in Boring, Oreg. From these, I extracted seed and sowed the seed in beds in a Boring, Oreg. nursery. From this bed, I obtained 918 seedlings that I planted into a testing row for evaluation and possible cultivar selection. In the fall of 1996, I selected a compact dwarf crabapple tree which I named ‘KW-8MX’ (unpatented). I evaluated its potential over the next several years. While promising, I decided that ‘KW-8MX’ did not have all of the qualities that I desired in a new cultivar, especially in that its flowers were somewhat small and poorly shaped.
As Malus ‘KW-8MX’ did possess an unusually dwarf and compact habit, I decided to pursue cultivar improvement by growing large populations of its seedlings for selection. In the fall of 2003, I picked the open pollinated fruit from my single ‘KW-8MX’ tree and sowed the seed. These grew well the following summer, and in March of 2006, I dug and transplanted 408 seedlings grown from these seeds into a transplant bed. Over the summer of 2006, I inoculated these seedlings with apple scab fungus (Venturia inaequalis) and marked all susceptible seedlings for disposal. I also marked for disposal all seedlings with an undesirable visual appearance. Through this selection process, I reduced the 408 seedlings to 59 which were kept for transplanting and further evaluation. The others were destroyed. In the spring of 2007, I transplanted these 59 selected seedlings into a row. These were evaluated for form, foliage, disease resistance, flower quality, and fruit quality over the next three years, and the best 10 trees were selected and transplanted into another row in the same Boring, Oreg. nursery for further selection. In July 2011, it was apparent to me that one single tree out of this group of 10 trees was uniquely superior because of its combination of compact growth, dwarf habit, desirable flowers, clean high quality foliage, and excellent ornamental fruit. I named this tree ‘JFS-KW207’. The other 9 selections were destroyed. In January of 2012, I transplanted this original ‘JFS-KW207’ tree into a long term observation block for further testing and evaluation.
In March of 2012, I took scion wood of ‘JFS-KW207’ and directed the top grafting onto crabapple stems, grafting 15 trees of which 13 grafts were successful. In March of 2013, I again directed grafting of 15 trees with 14 successful takes. In September of 2013, I directed propagation by budding onto crabapple understock, with 7 of 9 buds being successful. This asexual propagation was accomplished in Canby, Oreg.
Observations of the resulting asexually propagated plants has shown that the characteristics of my new tree are firmly fixed and the asexually propagated trees have been identical to the original tree in every manner that has been observed.